Hurricanes hold election-year peril for candidates

Intent on showing the empathy and crisis leadership voters want, Republicans from Mitt Romney to Southern governors scrambled to shape their tone and tactics Monday as an ominous storm barreled past their national convention site in Tampa, Fla., and toward the broader Gulf Coast.

Political peril awaits those who fumble disaster preparedness and responses. That's the legacy of Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 storm that forever changed how responses to disasters would be judged.

Democrats also were quietly making their own calculations, mindful of how one insensitively timed political speech or line of attack could bring blowback. On a low-profile day at the White House, President Barack Obama got briefings on Tropical Storm Isaac and went forward — for now — with plans for a campaign trip beginning Tuesday to Iowa, Colorado and Virginia.

Seven years ago, Katrina's blow was catastrophic, and an embarrassingly slow response from the federal government contributed to the toll and helped diminish President George W. Bush's second term. That episode became a potential make-or-break test for elected leaders to show smart politics and an agile, able response.

It was Bush's Air Force One flyover of Katrina's destruction of New Orleans that cemented the image of him as a detached leader — repeating a perception problem that his presidential dad, George H.W. Bush, faced for the federal response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

The younger Bush did not want to disrupt local rescue efforts but later wished he had landed in Baton Rouge, La., to show the people he cared.

"Its benefits would have been good public relations," Bush wrote in his memoirs. "But public relations matter when you are president."

Or running for president.

In brief comments Monday, Romney showed he was trying to find the balance.

"Our thoughts are with the people that are in the storm's path," Romney said as he and his wife, Ann, walked into a high school auditorium near his New Hampshire summer home to rehearse his convention speech.

Yet asked if thought about canceling the event, he said: "We've got a great convention ahead."

Jindal, highly regarded in the party, and Scott, a face of the host state, had both been scheduled to give speeches. Jindal said he was staying home because there "is no time for politics here in Louisiana" during such a storm.

In Tampa, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who guided his state through Katrina, said proper empathy would be shown to the people affected most. But he said the Republican Party cannot neglect its big chance to spread the convention message it had hoped to offer in the first place.

"Conventions are more important to the challenger," he said. "The president is in our living room every day."

Obama, meanwhile, was showing his presidential side. He declared a state of emergency in Louisiana Monday and reached out to Gulf Coast governors. The White House also made sure to announce that Obama, in his phone call to the Florida governor, offered any help the administration could provide, including to "insure the safety of those visiting the state for the Republican National Convention."

The feel of the GOP convention is already different.

Republicans essentially cut out the first day of activities on Monday as attention centered on Isaac's path. It was reminiscent of four years ago, when presidential candidate John McCain and his party shortened their Minnesota convention out of political respect as Hurricane Gustav bore down on the Gulf coast.

Isaac, a tropical storm, is not expected to pack anywhere close to the wallop of Katrina even as it makes its way toward the northern Gulf Coast.

But the political Katrina factor remains timely. Isaac was expected to hit the Gulf Coast by Tuesday or Wednesday — the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

The Katrina lesson applies to all natural disasters, from fires to tornadoes, as well as human tragedies like the mass shooting in July in Aurora, Colo. Obama and Romney both spoke at that time about the need for America to pull together, although harsh politics resumed shortly, as they are likely to again soon.

In New Orleans, where the hurricane jitters were back, Tulane University political science professor Brian Brox said the region's governors were moving fast to show their executive leadership — and perhaps, secondarily, audition for a potential appointment in a Romney Cabinet.

He said Romney and the convention organizers, though, could do nothing to help because "they have no authority."

"So what they're hoping for is that this is, at most, inconvenient, and that their allied Republican governors handle it well — and that everyone then turns their attention back to the convention," Brox said. "That's what they need."

Isaac also injected a new campaign context about the role of government in America. Obama and Romney have engaged mightily on this point on economic terms, but Obama and his team may now see a chance to portray themselves as the defender of disaster aid and other safety nets for the hurting.

Obama and top lawmakers like House Speaker John Boehner last year agreed in a budget pact to overhaul the way disaster aid is financed. Instead of infusions of emergency aid, which had led to budget peril, they agreed on a new system in which disaster aid would be funded on top of other programs.

In drafting his budget this spring, Rep. Paul Ryan — now Romney's running mate — sought to save about $10 billion a year by scrapping that system. He proposed funding disaster aid by cutting other domestic programs even further, on top of the already steep cuts such programs would face.

Ryan, however, got his knuckles rapped by GOP leaders, who sealed a gentleman's agreement that the new system would stay in place, at least for this year.